Flying with a one-year-old: do you buy him a seat?

Besides the obvious HOLY SHIT WE’RE FLYING WITH A ONE-YEAR-OLD!, we’re a bit flabbergasted that airlines seem to expect us to hold him on our lap (we looked into checked baggage and under-seat carriers, but those are a not permitted). They’ll willingly sell us a seat, but from what we’ve seen that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

We don’t drive anywhere without him firmly ensconced in a rear-facing car seat with added bubble wrap and packing peanuts wadded in his clothes for safety (actually, that’s just for fun. The duct tape is for safety).

His seat is one of those detachable kinds that clips into the base or can be belted down—so we’re more than likely to shell out the extra couple hundred bucks for the seat. Is this a common practice? Did you?

Also, what happens if we get on the plane and his seat won’t fit? Has anyone been in that situation?

Also, we’re flying with an infant?! :eek:

As someone who’s been on a 17-hour overseas flight with an 18-month old and no seat, I can tell you that it really depends on your kid. We didn’t get a seat for a number of reasons, including courtesy to fellow passengers, realistic expectations and price.

With respect to courtesy - our son would have screamed constantly. I’m sure that most people when faced with the choice between being trapped on a plane with a shrieking child for 17 hours or the very occasional kick in the back of the seat would opt for the second (I had an aisle seat and kept my son on my lap, feet facing the aisle for most of the flight unless it would get in someone’s way).

With respect to realistic expectations - some kids find new experiences, particularly loud ones, terrifying. Expecting him to remain in his seat for the duration or even a significant part of the flight was unrealistic, and he was small enough that it didn’t matter.

With respect to price - we spent about $5,000 on airfare alone. Personally, I would’ve preferred to have waited until he was old enough that we could have had a seat for him; however, my husband’s grandfather didn’t exactly choose to get a terminal illness then, so the timing of our visit, while not ideal, certainly wasn’t avoidable.

As far as domestic flights go, we never got a seat for our son on a domestic flight except once for mostly the same reasons - he wouldn’t stay put and I’d really rather have a wriggly kid on my lap than in the aisle of an airplane bothering other passengers and he was terrified of the noise initially. Had he not been in my arms, he would’ve been screaming (trust me, when we had an open seat next to us, I tried - it didn’t work out).

Bonus was not having to drag around a seat, a kid and very heavy carryons.

Hilarious!

I’ve flown from Korea to NY and many other flights with a little kid, under one.

Don’t buy the seat. Just plan on non-stop entertainment. :slight_smile:

On domestic flights, we’ve always simply held the baby. Several hours of holding is tolerable.

For international flights, we bought a seat for the baby. And taking an FAA-approved baby seat. Read the fine print on your baby seat’s stickers; the majority are approved and they will say so. Figuring how to install it onto an airline seat is a separate problem.

Whether you get a seat or not, don’t expect the baby to remain happy in one spot the whole time. Have all your tricks for entertaining and soothing ready to go.

Airline employees and flight attendants will often go out of their way to help you. If you need something or need help, ask them! Be friendly with them, even if they can’t help you immediately.

Rhythmdvl, how long is the flight? Two hours vs twenty would probably color people’s responses.

How big is your son? Has he actually passed his first birthday yet or were you just rounding up? Because if he’s one year old AND at least 20 pounds, he should probably be in a forward facing car seat by now, which gives you options.

When we flew with our daughter at about 18 months, we bought her a seat and carried along a car seat with us to buckle her into. But like **overlyverbose **said, it depends on your own kid’s personality. If we had tried to hold her in our lap, it would have been a disaster. Can you say wiggle worm? We would have been fighting with her the entire flight because she would have wanted to be running up and down the aisles. Better to strap her in and save our arm muscles for carrying the car seat when changing flights. And she did fine–she was used to the idea of being strapped in for travel, so she accepted it without much fuss. Plus, that way she got to look out the window.

Taking the car seat worked for us on that trip because when we got to our destination we were using a relative’s car, and had the car seat there with us. If you’re going to rent a car, you can rent a car seat along with it.

If you decide you want your son to have his own seat but not have to tote a bulky carseat around the airport, you could also look into this: http://www.kidsflysafe.com/ But again, note the weight requirements.

I wish you luck!

My daughter is a veteran airplane passenger and was on many many domestic flights (two under a year, then at least two per year thereafter), and she was remarkably easy to care for. Until she was 4.5 she usually fell asleep on takeoff and slept the majority of the flight (I think the pressure made her drowsy).

Have all your tricks at the ready, and we had our two seats inside, so we could sort of corral her towards the window.

Having a bottle ready (or breast) to suckle past the pressure change is a need for many, as the swallowing action helps equalize the pressure.

Good luck! Just try to not get frustrated at the assholes who expect the worst, even if your child is giving the worst, and focus on staying calm and helping kiddo stay calm.

I didn’t for a one-year old, but I wish I had for the 18 month old. She was big and wriggly and at one point slapped me across the face with her wiggling. There was turbulence and she was grumpy.

It was not fun.

My son went on his first plane trip at about six-seven months, and we did not buy a separate seat. He behaved like an angel almost the entire time. And we had no problems, even being in the middle section of a cross-country widebody flight that was delayed for 30 minutes on the tarmac in Las Vegas.

BUT - I would never do it again. I have been convinced since that time that we were taking an unreasonable and frankly stupid risk. A terrible flaming death crash is not necessary to make the lap baby a bad idea, google for stories of moderate turbulence and resulting injuries to adults. Now convince yourself you can hold your baby throughout that punishment.

I am not a safety crazy parent, but I would never allow my child to ride in a car without a seat belt. Why would I allow it in an airplane? Sorry for the rant, but the lap baby concept is a horribly tragedy waiting to happen.

He’ll be one year and two weeks. His grandparents have been relentlessly asking to take him on vacation with them for *over *a year. We’re not inclined to send them off with the child until he can at least remember his phone number (and maybe recite the Iliad from memory). They finally got the hint and shut up for about thirty seconds. Then they got the idea that they could ask us to go on vacation with them. And look, it’s his birthday to boot! Aren’t we the Happy Family? It’s actually not that bad. We have a relative down there who is getting married that weekend so it should be a blast. Oh, did we mention the relative is 92? Ever been to a 92-year-old’s wedding? Knowing her, it will be a blast.

He’s somewhat the mega-baby, growing out of 18-month old clothes already. He’s a bit under 25 lbs, and per the recommendations of our main car seat should be in it for another month or so (he’d better learn to walk soon).

It’s a short flight from New York to Florida and back (though in terms of general relativity, it could be eons. Not that we don’t get along with our relatives, or that they’ll even be on the same flight).

We’re not so much concerned with holding him or managing the wriggling mass that becomes the little contortionist. It’s the bumps, dips, and occasional mountainside we’re thinking of (neither of us is over Macho Grande). The whole mentality of if you’re in a moving vehicle you should be wearing a seatbelt and wearing clean underwear. Sure, there’s the occasional get up and walk around the cabin, and if he goes nuts (he’s a very quiet baby … at sea level) we’ll take him out and toss him back and forth, but it’s pretty disconcerting to our intuition—if we have to put our tray tables up and file affidavits that our seatbelts are fastened during takeoff, landing, and barrel rolls, nonchalantly holding him on our laps seems bizarre.

Man, new parenthood is sooo challenging our intuition. Next you’re going to tell us that when he starts throwing fits in his toddler years, we won’t be able to use reason and logic to calm him down.

I will also add that the airline always tried to leave the seat next to me empty regardless - especially nice since I was breastfeeding.

They were not able to do so on that one flight when she was 18 months.

We flew with a 13-month old (including a stopover and plane change). But we sprang for the extra seat – he was heavy and squirmy enough that neither of us wanted to hold him for three hours. In his seat, he slept a good part of the flight.

I flew with a 13 month-old without his own seat from NC to MI once, and back- no problems at all. Except, if you do give him a bottle to help with the ear pressure thing, DO NOT put juice in it. Trust me on this. And if you fail to heed my warning, at least know that the flight attendants will NOT assist you in cleaning the resultant diarrhea as the rest of the passengers are disembarking, but rather will stand there as a group, gawking at you in horror. Trust me on that, too.

We flew with our daughter when she was 13 months old, and we sprang for the extra seat. IMO, it was well worth the money - holding her in my arms for a three hour flight sounds neither pleasant nor safe.

We brought her normal car seat, which is also rated for air travel - we were going to need a car seat at our destination, anyway. She was over 20 pounds, but we were still riding her rear-facing in our cars (on advice received from many sources that rear-facing is safer and kids should stay that way as long as practical). The seat would not fit rear-facing on the aircraft - it wasn’t even close - so she took the plane trip facing forward.

We got one of these, which was awesome! With that thing strapped to her car seat we could roll it (and her, if she sat in it) around the airport just like a rollaboard suitcase.

Our son is eight months old now. As it happens, between the ages of five months and the present he has flown quite a lot with us.

Most of the flights have been between two and five hours in length, and we bought a seat for him. We have brought his approved car seat on board and put him in there for much of the flights.

Two flights were only an hour long each, so for those we didn’t buy a seat but carried him in our laps. He was quite fidgety. So we’ve decided that an hour is about the longest we can do this for.

As a courtesy to the other passengers, please buy an extra seat. He doesn’t have to stay in the seat the whole trip, but if you buy the seat, the airline can’t put some poor passenger in it. He doesn’t want to sit next to you while you wrestle with the kid.

Also – Benedryl is your friend - or at least, the other passenger’s friend.

I had the pleasure of sitting near a small one on a recent flight. I have to say the kid was extremely well behaved. Much better than the adult passenger in front of me, as a matter of fact.

I’ve flown with my kids a lot, and if you can afford it, I highly recommend buying your one year old his own seat for a number of reasons:

  1. You can buckle him into his car seat and keep him contained. If he’s used to riding in the car, he probably won’t complain too much.

  2. It’s good to have a bit of extra space. Even if you have him on your lap for part of the time, you can use his seat to set your carry on bag on to rifle through for toys, snacks, diapers, etc. If you have someone sitting next to you, it’s difficult for you (and disruptive to your neighbour) to constantly have to yank your bag out from under the seat to retrieve something.

  3. If your kid goes to sleep, you can put him in his own seat instead of having to sit cramped and as motionless as possible to avoid waking him up. You might even get a chance to read a magazine or something, if you’re lucky.

From the safety point of view, a separate seat with an appropriate child restraint system is absolutely the best option, and is, in fact, one of the list of Safety Recommendations (PDF) recently issued by the National Transportation Safety Board following the investigation of a fatal crash of a Pilatus PC-12 back in March 2009.

(your flight is a 14 CFR Part 121 commercial air carrier flight).

It should be noted that the FAA has consistently disagreed with repeated Safety Recommendations of the same type from the NTSB, to the point where one member of the board voiced dissent, saying

Vice Chairman Hart actually recommends that the FAA review the science and physics regarding lap-held children and accident/incident survivability, because “if there is no scientific basis for the exception, then the exception is arbitrary, by definition, and SHOULD BE RESCINDED”.

Personally, I agree with Vice Chairman Hart. The laws of physics still apply to children under 2 (no matter how much they seem to be everywhere at once), and if I had a child, I’d pay for an extra seat and a properly rated restraint device.

Also, this might not apply to a regional flight such as yours, but at least for long-haul flights a lot of airlines have approved seats/bassinets available - it’s worth asking them.

Done … completely done. No longer a hint of a question. While it can be done it seems the best course for safety and other passengers’ nerves. Not an “extra” seat; his seat (I’ll just take it out of his college fund. He can take it back later out of the money he pays for our nursing home).

That looks awesome! Our current system has a bucket to put the Dudeling in that attaches to a car base (all of which belong to us). It detaches from the base and clicks into a stroller–which is too big to shlep onto an airplane. This looks like a great way of having both cake and being fed. Thanks!

But he hasn’t studied law. Works for the Road Runner, doesn’t it?

That would be an excellent solution to lugging it around the airport, but then there’s the cab/rentawagon thing…

Thanks!